The Witch's Tongue

by James D. Doss

  She nodded her gray head. “I know all about him and his big brother, Ned. There’s some disagreement about which one is the meanest, but Felix is the smartest of the two.” Daisy assumed a tolerant look. “I don’t have nothing against Apaches. I figure the best of ’em are almost as good as a Ute. But Felix and Ned—those two are bad all the way down to the marrow.” She squinted at her nephew. “Did you know their own mother threw ’em both out of her house last year—told ’em to never come back?”

  Moon admitted that he had not heard about this.

  Daisy looked to the south, from where the Navarones had come. “I’d have felt better if the both of those yahoos had stayed down in New Mexico, but from what I hear nobody wanted ’em on the reservation. So they come up to Colorado, rented a place over by Pagosa.” There was no point in telling her nephew that Felix dabbled in bad magic, because Charlie Moon did not believe in such things. And some of the reports were hard for even the shaman to swallow. Felix had made his brag around Ignacio that neither knives nor bullets could kill him. And if that were not enough, the Apache also claimed he could fly! Such foolishness. Daisy took another look at Jim Wolfe in the SUPD Blazer. She supposed that those sickly-pale matukach folk must have their ups and downs, just like regular people. “Did he get hurt any by the Apache?”

  Moon had been waiting for this. “He got bunged up a bit.”

  Daisy Perika raised an eyebrow. “How bad?”

  “Don’t let it worry you. It’s not like he’d expect you could do anything for him.” She did not take the bait. “What Jim needs is to see a real doctor—”

  “You go get him,” she snapped. “Bring him in here.”

  OFFICER WOLFE shook his head. “I don’t think I should.”

  “It’s up to you,” Charlie Moon said.

  “I wouldn’t want to put the old lady to any trouble.”

  The Ute gave him a knowing look. “If you’re afraid of Aunt Daisy, it’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

  Jim Wolfe glared at the smug-looking Indian. “Charlie, I know you don’t believe in any of that witchin’ stuff.” He nodded to agree with some unspoken conviction. “But I know of them that’ve been hexed, and them that’ve been cured by counterhexes. More than once down in Navajo country, I have seen it done with my own eyes.” The SUPD officer touched a fingertip to his swollen lip, stared at the shaman’s trailer home as a terminally ill man might regard an open grave.

  Moon leaned closer to his victim, dropped his voice to a hoarse whisper. “You don’t have to go inside, I could ask her to put some of her homemade medications in a plain brown envelope, then I could bring it out here, just drop it on the seat beside you, and—”

  “Go ahead, Charlie—make fun of a brother lawman.”

  “Okay, if you’re sure you don’t mind.”

  “Anyway, the old lady’s probably just being polite.”

  Moon grinned. “I think we can safely rule that out. But if you don’t let her have a look at you, it’ll hurt her feelings.”

  This seemed to alarm the prospective patient. “Well, I wouldn’t want your aunt to think I was an ingrate.”

  HAVING INTRODUCED Jim Wolfe to his aunt, Charlie Moon stood just inside the kitchen door—waiting for the fun to begin.

  Wolfe meekly obeyed the old woman’s snappish order to sit down at the dining table. Unconsciously, he clasped his knobby hands in prayerful fashion. “Ma’am, it is real nice of you to help me like this. You are a real Good Samaritan.”

  There was no response from the feisty old Philistine.

  The SUPD officer licked at his bulbous lip, which pained like it had been stung by a dozen wasps. He was certain it was infected with billions and billions of the Apache’s virulent nose-germs. “If you don’t have the right medicine on hand, that’s all right. I’ll be fine.”

  Daisy turned to stare at the white man, as if she wondered how such a pitiful specimen had gotten into her kitchen.

  Wolfe tried to avoid the peculiar old woman’s eyes, but was unable to resist the hypnotic gaze.

  Daisy turned to Charlie Moon. She pointed at the door. “Out.”

  For Wolfe’s sake, Moon assumed a worried look. “Maybe Jim would feel better if I hung around and made sure you don’t use the wrong potion—”

  Daisy pointed the finger harder. “Out now!”

  Wolfe stared imploringly at the tribal investigator. Charlie, please please please don’t leave me here with her….

  The tribal investigator understood the silent communication perfectly. He put on his hat. “See you later, Jim.” And so it was that Charlie Moon took his leave. This will be a great experience for Jim Wolfe. Give him some good stories to tell.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE FULL TREATMENT

  Feeling desperately lonely for Charlie Moon’s company, Jim Wolfe stared at the closed door. After the sound of the Expedition had faded in the distance, he felt the need for conversation. “I’m a good friend of Charlie’s.” So don’t do nothing to hurt me.

  “I’m glad to hear it.” Daisy snorted. “That big jug-head needs all the friends he can get.”

  Wolfe managed a sickly smile.

  She glared at him. “What’s so funny?”

  “Oh, nothing.” The smile slipped away. “Nothing at all, ma’am.”

  He had the lean, hungry look of a West Texan. “Where’re you from?”

  “Cherokee County, Oklahoma.” He said this with a faraway look. “It’s real nice.”

  “I was in Tulsa one time back in 1935. Ate some bad pork, got food poisoning.” Daisy Perika disappeared into her small bathroom, returned with an ancient bottle of Mercurochrome. “I don’t work for nothing. But if you’re short on greenbacks, I might accept something in trade.” She glanced at his wrist. “Like maybe that watch.”

  He pushed his cuff over the expensive timepiece. “What will I owe you in cash money?”

  “Fifty dollars.”

  He squirmed under her avaricious gaze. “I don’t think I’ve got that much on me.”

  The old woman’s mouth twisted into a wicked grin. “How much have you got?”

  Wolfe checked his wallet. “Twenty-six dollars.”

  “That’ll do for a down payment.” She shook the small brown container, unscrewed the cap.

  He stared suspiciously at the bottle. “What’s that?”

  “A special potion. I make it from horny-toad livers, green grasshopper vomit, and salted hummingbird tongues.”

  “That sounds pretty…uh…potent.”

  “I learned the recipe from a blind Hopi sign painter who drives a school bus down by Shungopavi. Now hold still if you don’t want your eyeball painted too.”

  Wolfe clamped his eyes shut, gritted his teeth.

  The shaman poked the glass applicator at the split lip, leaving a scarlet streak of Mercurochrome.

  “Ouch!”

  “Don’t be such a sissy.” She muttered a few words in the Ute tongue, spat on her fingers, rubbed them across the patient’s forehead three times. “Get up,” she commanded.

  The wary man stood.

  “Now don’t move a whisker.” The old woman picked up a broom, made a swing, slapping the linoleum near his boots.

  What was that all about? But the alarmed patient dared not ask.

  “I swatted your shadow,” she said. “That scares away any bad spirits that might be pestering you.”

  “Oh—thanks.”

  “Now sit down again.” Having completed her surprise assault on his shadow, Daisy Perika stood with her eyes closed, teetering back and forth on her heels.

  Wolfe stared at the performance. I hope she don’t fall down.

  Presently, the shaman opened her eyes, observed her patient’s lip. “That’ll be better by morning. Now I’ll tend to your other cuts.”

  Worried that the notorious woman might be about to do some more spitting, Wolfe thought he might steer her off on another course by changing the subject. “Ma’am, I was just wondering. Do you stil
l mix up them…” He could not make himself say it.

  The shaman capped the medicine bottle, scowled at the impertinent fellow. “Do I still mix up them what?”

  He wilted under her searing gaze. “Oh, nothing.”

  Having bullied her patient into submission, she dropped the Mercurochrome bottle into an apron pocket. She went to a cabinet over the sink, removed a black shoe box, placed it on the table. Under her patient’s watchful gaze, she removed the lid, rummaged around in the assortment of jars and bottles half-filled with viscous liquids, bits of dried roots and seeds and leaves, a lumpy tobacco sack that looked like it was filled with pebbles. “I was hoping there might be something here good for healing cuts, but I don’t see what I was looking for.” She removed a plastic sandwich bag that contained a gritty, yellowish gray stuff. Daisy turned it in her wrinkled hands, muttered something in the Ute dialect, placed it ever so carefully on the table beside the shoe box—as if it contained a few grams of well-aged TNT. To add to the effect, she covered it with a paper napkin. Pretending not to notice Wolfe’s interest in the small ritual, Daisy found a squat blue jar in the shoe box, opened it, and applied a soothing white salve to cuts on his face and neck.

  Now that’s more like it. “What’s that?”

  This time she was truthful: “My own special bee-weed ointment.”

  “Oh.”

  But that’s not what you really wanted to know. Daisy waited for curiosity to get the better of the white man.

  Wolfe knew with every fiber in his body that he should not ask. “Uh…what’s in that plastic bag?”

  “What plastic bag?”

  Like a small boy standing at the end of a diving board thirty feet above the water, he hesitated. “The one under the napkin.”

  “Oh, that plastic bag.” The old woman’s expression was unreadable. “You sure you want to know?”

  He nodded himself straight into the abyss.

  She stared at the man as if appraising whether he was worthy to share the dark secret. “If I tell you what it is—you have to promise me you won’t never tell a living soul.” Especially Charlie Moon.

  The policeman’s voice was raspy with apprehension. “Yes ma’am. I mean, no ma’am. I mean—I wouldn’t never breathe a word to nobody.”

  Daisy continued to stare at her patient. The interlude stretched into the longest moment of his life. Finally, she removed the napkin and said, “It’s corpse powder.”

  Wolfe’s back flattened against the chair. He could not pull his gaze from the transparent sandwich bag. “You don’t actually mean…”

  She nodded. “Sure I do. It won’t work if it ain’t got some parts from a dead person in it.”

  Oh my God. “Like—a sliver of fingernail?”

  She dismissed this optimistic guess with a grim expression, a slow shake of her head.

  Fearing that the old crone was about to reveal the grisly ingredients, he hurried to divert her from this course. “So what do you do with the—uh—preparation?”

  “It’s only used for one ailment—ghost sickness.”

  It had not occurred to Jim Wolfe that ghosts ever got sick, and he barely stopped short of saying so.

  Taking note of the perplexed expression on the white man’s face, the shaman explained, “Sometimes, spirits of dead people come back to torment the living. That’s what Indians call ghost sickness.”

  The light was slowly dawning. He nodded at the plastic bag. I bet they have to swallow some of it…. “So you treat the haunted person with that concoction?”

  “That ain’t no concoction, that’s a medicine. A powerful medicine.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

  She fixed him with the sort of gaze a gray fox uses to mesmerize a cornered chicken. “If someone was to come to me, needing protection from a ghost, I’d sell ’em some of that medicine. They’d take it to where the dead person’s mortal remains was, and sprinkle the corpse powder over the body.”

  He tugged at his shirt collar. “And that’d work, would it?”

  “It has never failed.” She got another gob of bee-plant ointment on her finger. “If you want me to doctor those other cuts, take off your shirt.”

  He did.

  And the old woman was stunned by what she saw.

  Suspended on a leather cord around his neck was a marvelous lump of turquoise. The crescent-shaped stone was the deep blue of the western sky on a cool October morning. Moreover, it was wonderfully marbled with silver veins—suggesting a multitude of glistening streams. So very beautiful. And so familiar. The shaman knew that this was more than a bauble—this was a very powerful object. But where have I seen it before? As she pondered this question, Daisy applied the bee-weed balm to a laceration on his arm.

  Noting the old woman’s interest, Jim Wolfe tapped his finger on the turquoise pendant. “Couple of years ago, I bought this in a pawn shop down at Farmington. Cost me three hundred bucks. It’s a good-luck charm, but only if you to wear it next to your skin.”

  She took another look at the lump of blue stone. And the old woman who could not recall what she had for supper yesterday, suddenly remembered a day more than seventy-seven years ago. It seemed unbelievable, but there could be no doubt. This was the very pendant that had belonged to Hasteen K’os Largo, the famous Navajo medicine man who had done a sing for Daisy’s father, when Daddy returned from France after that terrible War to End Wars. Its appearance here and now was nothing short of a miracle—and it was far too sacred and powerful an object to hang around the neck of this know-nothing matukach. Thus it was that the corrosive sin of covetousness took firm hold of Daisy Perika’s heart.

  Jim Wolfe watched her face, wondered what was going on behind the mask. I think she likes it. He removed the pendant, offered it for her inspection.

  She backed away, raising her hand in a protective gesture. “No—I’d never touch that thing.”

  He blinked at the eccentric woman. “What’s wrong?”

  The shaman shook her head. “I shouldn’t say.” But of course, she did: “That’s a bad piece of stone. Very bad.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so.” Jim Wolfe dangled the stone in her face. “This is where all of my good luck comes from.”

  She fairly hissed at him. “It’ll make you sick.”

  He frowned at the turquoise lump. What’s she talking about?

  All that was required was a seed of doubt. “For a while, you won’t notice nothing much.” The man had bloodshot eyes. “Then you’ll have trouble sleeping.” She had seen a pouch of tobacco in his shirt pocket. “And you’ll get a cough.”

  “I feel fine,” he said hoarsely.

  There were hints of fingernail marks on his dry, flaky skin. “And sooner or later, there’ll be the itching.”

  He valiantly fought the urge to scratch.

  Daisy looked immensely sorry for her unhappy patient. “And then you’ll start to worrying all the time.”

  The worried patient nodded.

  “I hate to tell you, but when it’s almost too late—there’ll be heart palpitations.”

  The thumping pump under his sternum missed a beat.

  “And finally—” She interrupted herself with a sigh. “No, I’d better not talk about that.”

  He leaned forward. “What?”

  “Trust me. It’s better that you don’t know.”

  His complexion now resembled chalky eggshell. “You saying this little piece of rock can do all that?”

  “All that and lots more.” She shrugged. “Of course, I could be wrong.” Her confident expression was testimony that this had never happened. “But if it was me, I wouldn’t keep that thing next to my skin.”

  Absently, the victim scratched at his chest.

  “I wouldn’t even want it in the same house where I slept,” she added. “Not unless it was…” She let the suggestive words hang in the air.

  “It cost me a lot of money.” Wolfe laid the cursed thing on Daisy’s kitchen table, gave her a hopeful
look. “Isn’t there some way it could be fixed?”

  The shaman stared longingly at the lump of turquoise. “It all depends.”

  “On what? Soon as I get my next check, I’d be glad to pay you whatever—”

  She silenced him with a wag of her finger and a saintly expression. “I don’t charge money for taking dark spells off people—or their things.”

  His eyes were wide with hope. “Look, anything you could do—I’d sure appreciate it.”

  “I might be willing to give it a try,” the sly old woman said. “But it could be dangerous.”

  “Dangerous?” Wolfe’s mouth went dry. “What could happen?”

  “Maybe nothing at all.” Daisy pointed at the subject of their discussion. “But if it’s been witched real good—it might sizzle like a sausage in a skillet. Or go boom!”

  His forehead furrowed into a puzzled frown.

  She explained, “It might explode.”

  The wretched man’s mouth fell open. He drew a raspy breath.

  “Do you have a clean handkerchief?” She had seen it in his hip pocket.

  Wolfe produced the folded piece of linen.

  Daisy gave him an order: “Take that turquoise off the string.” She went to a small table under a window, removed a cracked saucer from beneath a potted geranium. She pointed with a jut of her chin. “Put it on the saucer.”

  He hesitated. “Wouldn’t it be better if you—”

  “I’m not laying a finger on that thing.” She appealed to reason: “You’ve had it against your skin all this time. One more touch won’t matter all that much.” She watched as he fumbled to disconnect the leather cord.

  “You can throw the rawhide string on the floor. I’ll sweep it up later.”

  Wolfe did as he was told, and laid the blue stone on the saucer.

  “Now put the handkerchief over it.”

  He did.

  The shaman closed her eyes. Passed her hands over the shrouded stone. Mumbled a few words in the choppy Ute dialect. Cracked one eye to check on the white man. His fists were clenched, his eyes wide open.